I noticed the SUVs following the teams last night in the episode.......at a respectable distance. If you rewatch and look....you will see it too. It was usually in a shot taken from behind the teams as they hopped by the cameraman......shooting down the street toward the preceding teams....

Yeah I think due to a very relaxed group on the first flight and not much room for error in such a small town, teams were majorly bunched together. I saw a lot of crew last night as well! They also made it seem like teams were not there when Jet and Cord got thereHowever the airport is closed from 11pm-approx 4am. So teams would have still been there!

Deaf people can drive in the U.S.; while drivers are tested for their vision, they're not tested for their hearing.

Any sirens go with flashing lights on the emergency or law enforcement vehicles, so as long as the driver can see those using the side and rear view mirrors, they'll be approved. (The driver might be required to only drive vehicles with the additional mirrors: but that's about it.

I noticed the SUVs following the teams last night in the episode.......at a respectable distance. If you rewatch and look....you will see it too. It was usually in a shot taken from behind the teams as they hopped by the cameraman......shooting down the street toward the preceding teams....

I loved the roos and loved the aborigine tasks as well. At least the aboriginal tasks were semi culturally relevant.

Logged

"Our fans are pretty good. They don't give away too much. Sometimes people love dropping spoilers, but our fans are good. They tend to do it in such a way that doesn't ruin it for fans who don't want to know."--Phil Keoghan

I loved the roos and loved the aborigine tasks as well. At least the aboriginal tasks were semi culturally relevant.

there were just too few tasks for my taste

The material from the two first episodes fitted much better an 90 minutes premier. They should have an extra task for the second episode to fill it up a little, but otherwise it was interesting enough and if in the detour some teams had chosen the other option it would have been better.

Now that I think about it the original plan may have been first team checks in and then the TBC screen comes up as usual however due to the Cowboys being so far back they could make it more suspenseful by cutting the Tall Boat and letting the other 10 teams check in.

Hence the second episode was a bit 'light'

This being said I loved the start of the second leg - Cowboys in trauma and then cross to K/V. visually amazing

I liked the Detour. But then it seems as though that we're more focused on team dynamism this season rather than tasks and locations??

The only fact i'm going to whine about is that even though i do not think that Amanda and Kris should be even on this season and that they're not a team i'm rooting for (but i like them), it is a little unfair that they only have one task to decide their fate. I know the Kangaroo task can be seemed as a "task" but seriously, there should be a Roadblock to even things up. I felt that while Amanda and Kris's own fault led to their elimination.. the race could have been more fair to include in a RB. Of course, you can also say that teams like the cowboys and globetrotters were on the second flight but still checked in second and third.. so Amanda and Kris were ultimately eliminated due to their own fault.. i still hope that they should have shown us a Roadblock. And that A/K didn't get themselves sign up onto the first flight even though they had a lead...

It's all part of the challenge. The Detour was good enough to shuffle arrangements, at least. So I think we should not question why no RB is present because this are veteran racers. They know they need to step up. And even if one task would determine your fate, it's your fault to screw up.

It's all part of the challenge. The Detour was good enough to shuffle arrangements, at least. So I think we should not question why no RB is present because this are veteran racers. They know they need to step up. And even if one task would determine your fate, it's your fault to screw up.

I know i know.. i just wanted to see one more RB as i wanted to see more of Australia.. Broken Hill seems... like a dead town.

I totally agree with Caelstor that these first two episodes should have been a two-hour premiere. I was really disappointed with the first episode. The best part was the scene with the turtle. That was awesome. The second episode redeemed this TAR season in my eyes. I loved the cultural aspect with the aborigines, but I thought the "roo" costumes was a little too "cutesy". And this is from a woman who had their 26, 27, 28, and 34 year old sons dress in cloth diapers and baby bonnets and sent into Wal-mart to purchase baby juice and baby food as one of the tasks in my family's annual "Amazing Grace Race" this past Christmas. So, go figure. :<)

It's all part of the challenge. The Detour was good enough to shuffle arrangements, at least. So I think we should not question why no RB is present because this are veteran racers. They know they need to step up. And even if one task would determine your fate, it's your fault to screw up.

I know i know.. i just wanted to see one more RB as i wanted to see more of Australia.. Broken Hill seems... like a dead town.

But I would have also loved to have RB to further showcase Broken Hill.

"If "ifs and buts" were candy and nuts, what a Merry Christmas we all would have!"

First off my POV is always from a production point of view. After 20 years wearing black backstage @ theaters, concert stages and movie sets as a second job, it is just how my mind works and looks at TAR.

1) I think the paucity of events/tasks in Broken Hill were predicated on Phil et al, making that 125 pm flight back to Sydney and making that QF21 flight to Japan 24 yours ahead of the teams. I really don't think they could have added anything in Broken Hill and made those flight connections. So to me, the events in Broken Hill followed the timeline that was designed.

2) The events that happened at Palm Springs/Los Angeles also happened along the planned timeline.

3) The events that happened in Sydney DID NOT happen along the planned timeline. The diversion of QF12 really really messed up production's plans for that day. When Kisha/Jenn checked in with Phil at Shelly Beach, that should have been the last team to do that. But instead, the 8 teams from QF12 were actually about ~2 hours behind the timeline. A lot of them made up time, but I really doubt that production thought that 7 teams would share answers and make up that much time. Again, IF the planes had landed on time and teams progressed as they did, the Cowboys would not have been so far behind. They would have been in 8th, not 11th and had a 90 lead over the last 3 teams. If they lost the same 30 minutes on the ferry, they would still have had a hour lead to Oceanworld. From looking at the sun angles, it really doesnt look like they are more than and hour behind Kent/Vyxen checking in at the beach. Tis a pity that our Coutzy had to leave Manly before we found out. Kudos to Coutzy for all he did.

From Phil's video diary, the Cowboys check in such that he has time to wash his hair, do a standup at Oceanworld and drive all the way across Sydney to the airport in time to catch a 630pm flight. From you Sydney-siders, how long did that drive take at that time of day on a Monday? How long did it take to check in Phil et al., at the airport and get to the gate?

The Cowboys are pretty laconic normally, but I never sensed in them a sense of urgency after they left the flag puzzle. Even in the Schychells, when they knew they were last, they hustled. It might have been just the editing, but I believe they were told it was going to be a signup for flight in the AM and all the other teams were already checked in. I believe that production made them walk around till it got dark to make it look a lot later than it was when they checked in. Doing this would not have changed the outcome at all and would add to the suspense of a very popular team.

I think that Australia was orginally planned for two separate one hour episodes with the Express Pass/TBC to be the midpoint. [I actually think it was edited that way and also the way we saw it. After watching them both, BVM and CBS went with what we saw.] In the orginal storyboard, we would have probably seen the Tall Ship and ended the episode with the first team @ Shelly Beach told to keep racing, like always, with the other 10 ten teams still doing stuff at Oceanworld and the Yacht Club. The second episode would have started there and would have had a lot more events/tasks taking place and not seemed so "light."

I think they really scrambled to make lemonade out of some lemons this time.

I know that the NEL/TBC was definitely scheduled. But I think you bring up some great points about the editing choices we saw. They certainly had to do something to deal with the flight separations.

There was so only so much they could show in ref to the Cowboys' leg from hell. They were so behind not only because of the flight but because of Jet's delay in solving the Flag Puzzle, combined with a terrible time finding "Sail to Stop", something so many teams had a hard time with. Amanda and Kris are saying in their exit interviews that their own trouble finding that and hence getting on the second flight to Broken Hill may have been the actual cause of their elim, rather than the U-Turn. Wonderfully difficult legs, anyway.

Logged

"Our fans are pretty good. They don't give away too much. Sometimes people love dropping spoilers, but our fans are good. They tend to do it in such a way that doesn't ruin it for fans who don't want to know."--Phil Keoghan

"Our fans are pretty good. They don't give away too much. Sometimes people love dropping spoilers, but our fans are good. They tend to do it in such a way that doesn't ruin it for fans who don't want to know."--Phil Keoghan

If this helps any, it looks as if they were working on the puzzle for at least 70 minutes. Yakc's chart is here. Using the taxis didn't seem to provide a great advantage; many of the ferry teams wound up on the first charter. (I'm also puzzled from the insider videos that teams are using taxis to the airport--K/J even gave the driver their last $20. There were good public transport options even at 4:30 in the morning). Another curious thing for this season is that nobody is using tourist bureaus/visitor centers. The was one at the Manly wharf and one at the Rocks near Circular Quay.